It probably holds true for all humans that failure is not a welcome experience, and yet it occurs with or without our permission. The best of us are more flexible and able to view the failure as a manifestation of life’s impermanence and move on, but to some of us, who are more doggedly set on our expectations coming to fruition, failure is probably one of the hardest experiences to muster–probably at par with rejection.

Failure comes in many ways and for many reasons–it is hardest when we have to acknowledge our contribution to the experience, as much as we may want to brush it off and place the blame on others or feign that we did not have a hand in it. One of the hardest lessons of failure is that we are forced to come face to face with ourselves and the occurrence, and if we are wise, we must have a good hard look and find a way to not repeat the mistakes which lead to it.

If we try to digest the entirety of the failure, we will end up choking and probably suffering a serious depression or a mental breakdown. As with many overwhelming experiences, it might be better to digest it a day at a time or an element at a time. Where there are some factors which we may not come to terms with or justify, then we have to allow time to heal the wound so to speak.

We might not be as resilient as other people and it might take us a longer time to wallow and get over the experience. One of the more important things to remember is that we must learn to forgive ourselves and let go. This is, of course, easier said than done as we might keep ruminating about the past and wondering how and why, even with the best of intentions, we went wrong. We might be completely baffled as to why the experience has turned out to be an experiment gone awry even with our best efforts and intentions.

Hindsight is 20/20 and if we are honest with ourselves, we would recognise that we are as fallible as the next person and we most likely have overlooked some little things along the way which eventually add up–a lot of small bad or mistaken decisions do add up to a monumental disaster and we were most likely either too preoccupied, too sure of ourselves, too closed minded, or too stubborn to have realised it. Failure is a very humbling experience if we choose to learn from the lessons it brings us.

Repeating the sequence of events in our heads or wishing that we had known all along is one of the surest ways to not be able to move forward. Failure requires us to have the resiliency and flexibility to acknowledge the facts and be able to move away from the past and stay in the present one day at a time until we move further into the future and have the courage to trust ourselves once again.